Prologue – Heat Death
Factoid: The Second Law of Thermodynamics is possibly the farthest-reaching of all. The fact that the disorder of a system, entropy, must increase, has dramatic consequences for the long-term future of the cosmos. In discussing how dark energy is the ever-expanding drive towards our thermodynamic end, Katie Mack applies the Second Law this way in The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking). “When the accelerated expansion of the universe was discovered in 1998, the new paradigm placed us squarely in the path of a dark-energy-dominated future: one in which the cosmos gets progressively emptier, colder, and darker until all structure decays and we reach the ultimate Heat Death.” All structures decay in the ultimate state of disorder. Good thing that it’s estimated to be ten to the power of one-thousand years in the future.
Mack, K. (2021). The end of everything: (Astrophysically Speaking). Simon and Schuster.
CHAPTER 1: Universal Paradox
Factoid: In March 2015, NASA sent Scott Kelly to the International Space Station for a year-long mission. He was to study the physical, molecular, and cognitive changes that exposure to space could have on the human body — his body. Why Scott Kelly? Because his identical twin brother, Mark, could provide a control subject back on Earth and thus enable special insights into the subtle changes that might occur because of the unique environment of microgravity and increased cosmic radiation. What was one of the most striking discoveries in the NASA Twins Study? Scott experienced changes in the protective end caps of his DNA called telomeres. His chromosomes developed extended telomeres, a response to the stress of the unnatural environment his body experienced at a molecular level, possibly to provide additional protection. The level of biological adaptation that we and all living organisms possess is truly amazing.
NASA. “FAQs – NASA Twins Study – NASA,” n.d. https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/twins-study/faqs-nasa-twins-study/.
CHAPTER 2: Growth
Factoid: In the 1980s, Richard Normann, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Utah, came up with a way to build a brain-computer interface. The Utah Array looks like a tiny hairbrush, about the size of the ‘up-arrow’ on a computer keyboard. The grid of a hundred or more fine needles on the head can sense the small electrical fields that neurons produce. By implanting the array in brain tissue and connecting the electrical signals to a computer, researchers have been able to use this gold standard for neural interfacing to study the brain activity of many animals. They have even enabled a human implanted with an array to control prosthetic devices. But there are problems in maintaining a rigid metal interface with soft brain tissue. Our bodies naturally fight the intrusion of foreign objects. Enter hydrogels, the next generation of neural interfaces. By using a conductive polymer medium, researchers have been able to establish a more natural brain interface, opening up new potentials for humans enhanced with both computer and mechanical capabilities.
Mullin, Emily. “This Man Set the Record for Wearing a Brain-Computer Interface.” WIRED, August 17, 2022. https://www.wired.com/story/this-man-set-the-record-for-wearing-a-brain-computer-interface/.
CHAPTER 3: Abnormal Behavior
Factoid: We flip the power switch on our computer as if it were a simple light switch. But in the electronic guts of your machine, a carefully orchestrated dance takes place. Initially, your processor only knows how to ask for a fixed set of instructions burned into the ROM (Read Only Memory—data and code that remains when there’s no power) called the BIOS (Basic Input Output System). This is a small amount of code that knows how to connect to your keyboard, mouse, monitors, and hard drive(s). After some checks, like looking for your RAM (Random Access Memory—data/code that is read/write but lost when power is off), the BIOS then loads the boot sequence, which results in the loading of your operating system into RAM from your hard drive. When that’s complete, the BIOS turns over control to the operating system, and you are off to the races. Dependable as a light switch . . . well, almost.
FutureLearn. “Updates, Insights, and News From FutureLearn | Online Learning for You.” FutureLearn, October 25, 2022. https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/computer-systems/0/steps/53497
CHAPTER 4: Parasite
Factoid: Although the honeybee (Apis mellifera) unfairly gets the bulk of the credit, it’s native bees that pollinate many essential crops, and most plants and trees. Yet we know very little about these other powerful pollenators. Entomologists estimate there are approximately 4,000 native bee species in the United States alone. We understand little of their vital connection to our ecosystems and, in fact, have not even named ten percent of these insects. Scientists believe that up to half of the native bees are pollen specialists—bees that only pollinate one species or genus of plants. Crops such as tomatoes, cranberries, and blueberries produce larger and more abundant fruit when pollinated by native bees. Squashes, pumpkins, gourds, and annual sunflowers are some plants that require specialist pollinators instead of honeybees. If the specific bees for these plant species die, so do the plants.
Rent Mason Bees. 2024. “About Mason Bees – Rent Mason Bees.” March 7, 2024. https://rentmasonbees.com/about-mason-bees/.
What is the role of native bees in the United States? | U.S. Geological Survey. (2018, December 10). https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-role-native-bees-united-states#:~:text=In%20almost%20all%20crops%2C%20native,they’re%20visited%20by%20bees.
“25 Facts About American Wild Bees – Protecting Bees.” n.d. https://protectingbees.njaes.rutgers.edu/pollinator-info/pollinator-news/25-facts-about-american-wild-bees/.
CHAPTER 5: Realignment to Plan
Factoid: John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for some rather mind-bending work. A long-standing inconsistency between Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics boils down to quantum entanglement. Quantum theory says that when the state of one of two entangled particles is observed, the other particle’s state is then immediately fixed—no matter how far apart from each other they may be. The problem is that if the particles are very far apart, it could require that the information of the observation traveled faster than the speed of light, an impossibility in Relativity-based physics. Years of work by Clauser, Aspect, and Zeilinger have shown that, yes, quantum entanglement is a thing, there are no hidden variables that might tip the hand . . . and it’s faster than light. Their work has tremendous implications for the possibilities of quantum computation and quantum communication.
ScienceDaily. “Two Artificial Intelligences Talk to Each Other,” March 24, 2024. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240318142438.htm.
CHAPTER 6: Recall
Factoid: There’s a nutritional superfood hidden under the ocean waves along many coastlines—seaweed. High in vitamins and minerals, seaweed such as kombu kelp is one of the most potent sources of iodine. Just one gram of kombu can provide over 1600% of the recommended daily intake of iodine for an adult. Try a few flakes sprinkled on your morning yogurt for both added flavor and nutrition. But kelp is also an essential food source within its ocean environment. The impact of its loss was illustrated in 2015 with the collapse of bull kelp off the California coast. An unprecedented marine heatwave—exacerbated by climate change—combined with a mysterious wasting syndrome of a protective starfish to see ninety-five percent of the kelp canopy destroyed. With the delicate interplay of marine species disrupted by the starfish sickness, the purple urchin population exploded and further devastated the remaining kelp. The ecosystem dominoes kept falling. In 2018, California’s recreational abalone fishery—the world’s largest—closed due to the collapse of its numbers. The fish were starving from the lack of kelp. Besides being a vital food source, kelp is twenty times more efficient at sequestering carbon than terrestrial plants, and that capability was also lost. The kelp has yet to recover, and the abalone fishery remains closed, with the ban recently extended until 2036.
PGDip, Sharon O’Brien Ms. “7 Surprising Health Benefits of Eating Seaweed.” Healthline, June 25, 2024. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/benefits-of-seaweed.
NASA Earth Observatory. “Monitoring the Collapse of Kelp Forests,” n.d. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148391/monitoring-the-collapse-of-kelp-forests.
CHAPTER 7: A Conscious Being
Factoid: The act of teaching based solely on verbal information exchange is a very complex process humans almost take for granted. We think that it’s quite natural for one person to describe a task and for another to understand and be able to perform the task without being physically shown the motions required. “Go clean your room!” Got it. (Technically, is your closet part of the room?) But machines don’t ‘think’ like humans . . . at least not until March 2024, when researchers at the Université de Genève got two AIs to talk and perform this complex cognitive feat. Alexandre Pouget and his team trained an AI’s neural net to model two areas of our human brains; Wernicke’s area, which perceives and interprets language, and Broca’s area, which, under the influence of Wernicke’s area, produces and articulates words. Then, after teaching one AI a simple task, that AI could transfer that knowledge by verbal instruction alone to another AI. They can’t clean your room on command yet, but we’re getting closer.
Billings, Lee. “Explorers of Quantum Entanglement Win 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.” Scientific American, February 20, 2024. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/explorers-of-quantum-entanglement-win-2022-nobel-prize-in-physics1/.
CHAPTER 8: Troublesome Siblings
Factoid: We’ve all faced a discussion where we know our viewpoint is based on hard facts, but our opponent seems to slip around all points in the argument. Welcome to the passive-aggressive arguer. They use strong, loaded words to describe things, but their meaning is vague and hard to pin down. They take your point and apply it absurdly. Sometimes they will subtly change the subject to a fringe area where your ideas and facts are weaker. They will intentionally attempt to anger you with rude, insulting references. When these schemes fail, they might cite an authoritative figure, reciting a slogan, even though it may not have been associated with your discussion at all. How can you stand fast against these tactics? Keep the discussion to the original point and call out how your opponent is continually trying to distract or divert because their real argument and supporting facts are weak.
Greene, Robert. The Laws of Human Nature. Profile Books, 2018.
CHAPTER 9: Flight Prep
Factoid: In the fall of 2020, the International Space Station was losing precious air due to a leak the astronauts could not find. They had narrowed the leak down to the Zvezda module, but their high-tech mass spectrometer and ultrasonic detectors, used to find small leaks by molecular analysis or sounds beyond human hearing, could not locate the specific problem. In an ingenious effort, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin reported that floating the tiny leaves from a tea bag in the sealed Zvezda module had enabled them to find the small crack with the particles of tea collecting at the hole. The moral of the story—when all else fails, have a cup of tea and read the tea leaves to find your Destiny . . . module leak . . . or Zvezda module leak in this case.
O’Callaghan, Jonathan. “Astronauts Plug Leak on the International Space Station With the Help of Floating Tea Leaves.” Forbes, October 20, 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2020/10/20/astronauts-plug-leak-on-the-international-space-station-with-the-help-of-floating-tea-leaves/.
CHAPTER 10: Best Hope
Factoid: The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is telling us things about exoplanets no other telescope can. Because the JWST can sense mid-infrared light, it can look at planets light-years away and identify specific chemical, thermal, and physical properties. This allows scientists to tell if a planet is a rocky wasteland with no atmosphere, or, has water vapor, methane, and other compounds in an atmosphere. It can also look through cosmic dust and gas to identify newborn planets, otherwise hidden to visible-light telescopes. While some biosignatures like oxygen are still hard to determine even with the JWST, it’s been a game-changer in our search for life on other worlds.
McCoy, Marty, Nasa Webb Mission Team, and Marty McCoy. “Webb’S Impact on Exoplanet Research – NASA Science.” NASA Science, March 19, 2026. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/science-overview/science-explainers/webbs-impact-on-exoplanet-research/.
CHAPTER 11: A Plan in Motion
Factoid: When most of us consider the phrase ‘License to kill’, we likely make the connection to the infamous spy and 1989 movie of that name. But Bond, James Bond, was not the first with such protection. Medieval knights, especially the Knights of the Round Table, received protection from legal proceedings with letters of protection. These letters gave the knights full immunity, allowing for fatalities that might result from necessary battles or knightly actions.
Sky HISTORY TV Channel. “6 Little Known Facts About Medieval Knights,” n.d. https://www.history.co.uk/articles/6-lesser-known-facts-about-medieval-knights.
CHAPTER 12: Values
Factoid: In the late 1980’s and into the 90’s an experiment called Biosphere 2 tested our ability to create and sustain a closed-ecosystem environment. The 3-acre facility included a desert, tundra, wetlands, and even a rainforest. As we considered the colonization of space, eight individuals lived in the isolated, self-contained environment of Biosphere 2 for two years. The study aimed to answer questions about human survival in a colony remote from Earth. The Biosphere 2 colony failed. Aside from cult-like behavioral issues with the scientists themselves, small imbalances and interactions within the frail ecosystems caused the entire environment to collapse. We now understand that the key strength and resilience of our planet’s environment is its maturity and widespread diversity. A scaled-down version of our complex ecosystem is prone to catastrophic collapse. Minor changes or imbalances can cascade into destroying critical species while exploding others, triggering further disintegration of the overall ecological balance supporting a livable environment for humans.
Wikipedia contributors. “Biosphere 2.” Wikipedia, March 22, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2#.
CHAPTER 13: Trust Me
Factoid: Suppose you want to land a $2.4 billion rover like Curiosity or Perseverance on Mars. Since the flight time takes about seven months, one of the many critical things you need to know is where in our solar system Mars would be at the specific time of its landing. Solving this three-dimensional dynamic problem involving millions of kilometers is essential to achieving a successful landing rather than spending all that time and money creating a new impact crater on Mars. Fortunately, NASA has built an amazing database of many objects in our solar system so that they can plan for and track just such a mission. What is truly fantastic is that you can experience a three-dimensional visualization of satellites, asteroids, rovers, and planets in our solar system using this data. Try it at the link provided and explore our neighbors in space!
“Eyes – NASA Science,” n.d. https://science.nasa.gov/eyes/.
CHAPTER 14: Many Voices, One Message
Factoid: Everyone knows the Moon orbits the Earth, right? Not exactly. In fact, they orbit each other. Just as our Earth’s strong gravitational field affects the movement of the Moon in space, the Moon’s lesser gravitational field influences Earth’s motion. Physicists call this the two-body problem. The movement of the two bodies depends on their mass and, per Issac Newton’s 1687 calculations, will orbit around a barycenter—a dynamic point that is determined by the two masses and the distance between their two centers. For the Earth and Moon, the barycenter is below the Earth’s crust, about one-quarter of the way to the center. This makes the Earth appear to wobble in space on its orbit around this imaginary point (besides orbiting the sun). Want extra credit? Look up the physics of the three-body problem. Suddenly, things get very complicated!
Wikipedia contributors. “Barycenter (Astronomy).” Wikipedia, November 20, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycenter_(astronomy).
CHAPTER 15: Hidden Below
Factoid: Looking into the night sky, it’s common to consider a group of stars in one of the eighty-eight standardized constellations as being in close relative proximity to each other. They certainly look that way. In reality though, that’s literally light-years from the case. For example, the easily recognized Cassiopeia ‘W’ in the northern sky has five major stars. The closest, Caph, is about fifty-five light-years away from us. Move just two stars over on the constellation—a seemingly tiny amount in the sky—and there’s Gamma Cassiopeia. It’s ten times as far away. Our view just doesn’t provide a three-dimensional perspective. The two are hardly in the same physical space-time neighborhood that they appear to be. But then again, considering the observable universe is ninety-three billion light years across, those five-hundred light years of separation are only five-ten-millionths of a percent of our observable space-time. So, in that light, maybe they really are close to each other, and to us.
Admin. “Cassiopeia’s W: Guide to Northern Clusters and Nebulae – Constellation Guide,” December 22, 2021. https://www.constellation-guide.com/cassiopeias-w/.
CHAPTER 16: A Medieval Robot
Factoid: Besides the well-known Mars landers, rovers and a cool drone, NASA is exploring the use of other autonomous robots that can assist humans in space. Aboard the ISS, three cube-shaped Astrobee robots (cleverly named Honey, Bumble, and Queen by the nerdy NASA scientists) are the next generation of robots that build upon the original SPHERES robots that were deployed to the station in 2006. In the station’s microgravity, the robots maneuver around this unique environment with only small fans directing jets of air. The robots have cameras, sensors, and a manipulator arm that allows them to help astronauts perform routine duties. Need some cargo moved from one module to another? Bumble and Honey will get busy as bees.
NASA. “Astrobee – NASA,” February 23, 2024. https://www.nasa.gov/astrobee/.
CHAPTER 17: Meet the Neighbors
Factoid: Cephalopods, a diverse class of mollusks that include octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish, have provided a puzzle to marine biologists for years. While our eyes have rods and three types of cones to distinguish different colors, cephalopods have only one type of photoreceptor, making their vision monochromatic. So how do they know what colors to change their bodies so that they can camouflage themselves and blend into their surroundings? It turns out that not only can an octopus’s entire body sense light, but they can also reshape their pupils to work like a prism. This allows an octopus to evaluate the different intensities of various wavelengths, and thus colors, of light. They aren’t giving you the evil eye; they are scanning you, wavelength by wavelength.
Stubbs, Alexander L., and Christopher W. Stubbs. “Spectral Discrimination in Color Blind Animals via Chromatic Aberration and Pupil Shape.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 29 (July 5, 2016): 8206–11. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1524578113.
CHAPTER 18: Elimination
Factoid: Although many nations have impressive national libraries, the US Library of Congress is an unparalleled world resource. From its humble beginnings inside the US Capitol in 1800 to the current 178 million items (as of 2023), the library has and continues to grow at a phenomenal rate. Besides the iconic Thomas Jefferson Building, facilities now include the John Adams Building, the James Madison Memorial Building, the High-Density Storage Facility at Fort Meade, MD, and the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in Culpeper, VA. In 2023, the library issued over 440,000 copyright registrations. It employed over three thousand employees and had an operating budget of $875 million. It is a virtual gold mine of books, films, videos, audio recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts.
The Library of Congress. “General Information | About the Library of Congress | Library of Congress,” n.d. https://www.loc.gov/about/general-information/.
CHAPTER 19: Cosmic Thoughts
Factoid: An octopus the size of your palm, found in warm waters from northern Australia to Japan, ranks among the world’s most poisonous creatures. The greater blue-ringed octopus warns predators away with the nearly iridescent blue rings covering its body. The tiny animal produces a powerful neurotoxin in its saliva called tetrodotoxin. Two milligrams of the toxin—a single drop of water weighs fifty milligrams—can kill a full-grown man in as little as twenty minutes. There is no known antidote or antitoxin.
Spencer, Erin. “The Blue-Ringed Octopus: Small but Deadly.” Ocean Conservancy, December 12, 2022. https://oceanconservancy.org/blog/2017/03/13/the-blue-ringed-octopus-small-but-deadly/.
CHAPTER 20: Travel to the Past
Factoid: Time travel is possible—some scientists do it every day. Their most successful time machines are the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. Since the universe is so vast, it can take billions of years for the light from a faraway star to reach us. In fact, we always view our own Sun in the past too, as it takes eight minutes for its rays to reach us. A very massive star might last only a few million years. So, there are stars in the night sky whose entire existence is simply the photons of light still traveling through space. The star itself has long since burned out, and the light traveling forever in the cosmos is just a history of what it once was.
Tammi, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth Tammi. “Time Travel: Observing Cosmic History – NASA Science.” NASA Science, February 26, 2025. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/science-behind-the-discoveries/time-travel-observing-cosmic-history/.
CHAPTER 21: Role Reversal
Factoid: After five and a half days of a 1973 police standoff, Kristin Enmark didn’t run from the bank robbers holding her hostage. Instead, she tried to protect the criminals and pleaded with the police not to hurt them. Enmark suffered from what psychiatrists dubbed the Stockholm Syndrome. In this twist of psyche, a hostage can become irrationally attached and compassionate towards their captors, even ones that might have threatened bodily harm, as one type of survival response.
Klein, Christopher. “Stockholm Syndrome: The True Story of Hostages Loyal to Their Captor | HISTORY.” HISTORY, May 28, 2025. https://www.history.com/news/stockholm-syndrome.
CHAPTER 22: Returning
Factoid: Here are some astounding numbers: Our bone marrow produces two million red blood cells per second to supply the twenty thousand kilometers of blood vessels in our bodies with the thirty trillion of these cells necessary to keep us alive with vital oxygen. Blood is the fluid of life. Although we have tried for over 150 years, science has yet to replicate this amazing fluid with a synthetic version. But there is new hope. A new freeze-dried powder, possessing a shelf life exceeding two years, can be combined with a saline solution when needed to mimic the oxygen-carrying function of blood. ErthroMer is one of the latest attempts to mimic the complex nature of red blood cells. If testing continues to be successful, it could drastically change survival rates in emergency medical situations, especially in remote or difficult environments.
Zaleski, Andrew. “There Will Be Blood.” Science 385, no. 6704 (July 2024). https://www.science.org/content/article/ultimate-blood-substitute-us-military-betting-46-million.
CHAPTER 23: Impatience
Factoid: The ISS has four systems to supply oxygen to the station. Splitting reclaimed water into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis generates the principal supply of O2. There are two systems that perform this reaction: the Russian Elektron oxygen generator in the Zvezda service module, and a similar NASA system in the Destiny module. If these systems fail, the crew can ignite canisters of solid lithium perchlorate. These Vika chemical oxygen canisters were originally designed for and used on the Mir space station. One canister can supply enough O2 for one crew member for one day. There are also high-pressure O2 cylinders mounted on the outside of the Unity airlock module that can provide a backup supply in an emergency.
———. “ISS ECLSS.” Wikipedia, August 12, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ISS_ECLSS&oldid=1281814058%20(accessed%20April%2013,%202025).
CHAPTER 24: Help from a Friend
Factoid: It’s not a simple undertaking to be counted among the spacefaring nations of the world. There’s a wide range of special technologies, skills, and knowledge a country needs to gain to earn a seat at this table. After six decades since humankind’s initial foray into space, only sixteen out of the almost two-hundred nation-states have developed a launch vehicle able to reach orbit. Only three—the United States, Russia, and China—can put a crewed rocket into space. The most recent member of the club? New Zealand is partnering with NASA to grow its technical prowess and make the country a significant player in the future space economy. Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula on the North Island’s eastern coast is the world’s first private orbital launch range. In addition, the Tāwhaki National Aerospace Centre on the east coast of the South Island is a multi-use facility for testing, flight, and launch capabilities. Finally, universities and research institutes are adding to the country’s rapidly growing knowledge base and space capabilities. New Zealand is betting on a future in space.
Holmes, Mark. “New Zealand’s First Space Minister Sets Out an Ambitious Space Roadmap.” June 2024, May 28, 2024. https://interactive.satellitetoday.com/via/june-2024/new-zealands-first-space-minister-sets-out-an-ambitious-space-roadmap.
CHAPTER 25: Limited Viewpoint
Factoid: What will the high temperature be this Friday? Will equity stocks be an excellent investment this year? To satisfy our desire to plan, we extrapolate current data analysis into regions where we have no actual information. It’s fundamentally the same exercise for a vast array of questions. We look at past data, recognize a pattern, and develop a narrative to explain the trend. Then, we assume the narrative will hold true and extrapolate a prediction of the future. Unfortunately, this can be prone to errors. And the further we push the extrapolation into the future, the more likely it is that the narrative we expect will diverge from reality. Often, systems are much more complex than even the most sophisticated models represent. We miss an important variable or put too much confidence in a data pattern we see. For example, while five-day weather forecasts have improved to ninety percent accuracy after decades of model updates, seven-day forecasts are still only eighty percent, and a ten-day forecast is essentially a 50/50 guess.
Wiggins, Joe. “Why Is Extrapolation so Dangerous for Investors?” Behavioural Investment, June 17, 2020. https://behaviouralinvestment.com/2020/06/03/why-is-extrapolation-so-dangerous-for-investors/.
CHAPTER 26: Predictable
Factoid: While hydrogen and helium came from the Big Bang, we needed stars to act as bakeries for most of the elements found in the periodic table. It is these bright fusion reactors in the night sky that build carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and the other elements of our universe . . . except for three. Lithium, beryllium, and boron can’t fuse the way other elements form because that reaction creates an unstable isotope. These three elements form through a reaction that’s even more powerful than the ten-million-degree Celsius fusion oven of a massive star. We need the highest-energy particles in the universe—cosmic rays—exploding out from black holes, neutron stars, and supernovae to slam into the larger elements and blast them into smaller parts, including lithium, beryllium, and boron. Without that, we might not exist at all. Our bodies need boron to build cell walls. We may be mostly stardust, but that’s just part of our amazing cosmic history.
Siegel, Ethan. “The Only Three Heavy Elements in the Universe That Aren’t Made in Stars.” Forbes, July 1, 2015. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ethansiegel/2015/07/01/the-only-three-heavy-elements-in-the-universe-that-arent-made-in-stars/.
CHAPTER 27: Safe Cover
Factoid: The most intense display of our sun’s power in recorded history occurred on September 1-2, 1859. An immense coronal mass ejection (CME) known as the Carrington Event drove a magnetic storm across the Earth’s magnetosphere. It was so intense that people in the northeastern United States reported they could read a newspaper in the middle of the night by the aurora’s light. Through electrical current induction, telegraph operators sent messages for hours without batteries to power the lines. Small-scale CMEs are very common, with weekly ejections occurring even during quiet solar activity. The probability of another CME equivalent to the Carrington Event is 1-in-100 annually. Experts believe that such an enormous CME today would cause significant damage to our power grid, causing widespread blackouts.
Wikipedia contributors, “Carrington Event,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carrington_Event&oldid=1314221765 (accessed September 30, 2025).
CHAPTER 28: A Knight’s Honor
Factoid: Escape pods are a familiar trope in science fiction. Their real-life development began in the 1960s when the survivability of ejection seats, introduced in the 1940s, became questionable as aircraft pushed into supersonic speeds and higher altitudes. The first real ‘pod’ entered service in 1961 with the B-58 Hustler supersonic bomber. A crew member could trigger a clamshell to close over their seat to create a rigid, self-contained evacuation chamber. If needed, the crew member could then trigger an ejection that blew the aircraft’s top canopy off and then ignited a small rocket booster to clear the pod from the aircraft. The pod could float to the ground after deploying a parachute at the proper altitude.
“B-58A Stanley Ejection Capsule,” n.d. https://www.ejectionsite.com/eb58caps.htm.
CHAPTER 29: Re-Entry
Factoid: During reentry, astronauts in the Apollo program experienced up to 7.19 g (seven times the force of normal gravity) for extended periods. A high-intensity roller coaster can subject you to six g for a short period. Roller coaster designers keep the exposure to this force short so that patrons don’t black out. But the most extreme levels of force the average person might unfortunately experience are vehicle crashes. At 45 mph (72 km/hr), if you are wearing a seat belt, your body can experience over 100 g’s of deceleration in a crash. If you’re not wearing a seatbelt—over 500 g’s. That’s the equivalent of having a 75-thousand-pound mass on your chest. Check the physics of your specific numbers with the link. Please wear your seat belt and drive with the knowledge of the potential physics you control in your hands.
Czernia, Dominik. “Car Crash Calculator.” Omni Calculator, July 1, 2024. https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/car-crash-force.
CHAPTER 30: Navigation
Factoid: The next time you are in the deep end of a pool, try something. Go underwater, close your eyes, expel enough air to be neutrally buoyant, and do a somersault and twist at the same time. Then, without opening your eyes or blowing bubbles, guess which way is up towards the surface. You may find you have lost your orientation in space. The engineers of the Mercury missions knew this could be a fatal problem for the astronauts in orbit and designed a multi-axis trainer to give the astronauts a means to train for such a situation. It’s a wild ride. You can see for yourself in one of the Multi-Axis Trainers at Space Camp in Huntsville, AL. (I highly recommend want-to-be astronauts of all ages attend Space Camp!) And because barfing somewhat ruins the fun, the design of the camp trainers ensures that your center of mass is on the central axis rather than off-axis, and they prevent you from flipping on the same axis multiple times; the two key factors that your stomach revolts against.
Navigation, Advanced. “The History of Space Camp. “Multi-Axis Trainer,” February 14, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjhLLfgWr2I.
CHAPTER 31: Mind, Not Body
Factoid: What if you were in some remote location, say one of the most isolated towns in America like Glasgow, Montana, or 250 miles above the Earth on the ISS, and needed emergency surgery? NASA is partnering with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to answer that question. In early 2024, surgeons showed that with the aid of a medical robot, help could be just minutes away. They successfully performed basic surgical techniques on . . . rubber bands. On Earth, the robots have passed clinical trials on actual people, but space adds additional complications. The biggest problem? The time delay between commands by the surgeon and the actions by the robot. When doing precise movements, microseconds count. Still, the tests were an achievement, with the surgeon, after successfully snipping the rubber bands, stating, “That was one small rubber band . . . but a great leap for surgery.”
“Surgical Robot Passes Space Test With Flying Colors | Nebraska Today,” n.d. https://news.unl.edu/article/surgical-robot-passes-space-test-with-flying-colors.
CHAPTER 32: Unpredictable
Factoid: With 361 million square kilometers (139 million square miles) of ocean and the relatively tiny footprint of two ships on that canvas, you would think that the probability of two ships colliding in the open ocean would be remote. But shipping lanes magnify the chances, especially when ships don’t follow maritime rules. The sinking of the Andrea Doria by the Stockholm forty-five miles south of Nantucket Island on July 25, 1956, is a perfect example. To reduce travel time back to Sweden, the Stockholm shifted its course out of New York from the standard channel for eastbound ships into the westbound traffic lane. In fog, the likelihood of a collision was further exacerbated by the Andrea Doria’s captain making a critical mistake and turning his vessel to port rather than the conventional starboard turn when the Stockholm showed up on its radar screen. These errors in judgment sent the Andra Doria to the bottom, killed fifty-one people, and prompted the greatest civilian maritime rescue in history, saving 1,660 lives.
HISTORY.com Editors. “Ocean Liners Collide off Nantucket | July 25, 1956 | HISTORY.” HISTORY, May 27, 2025. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/july-25/ships-collide-off-nantucket.
CHAPTER 33: A Blue-Ringed Party
Factoid: There’s a little-known group of ‘Nobels’ awarded to researchers with truly imaginative approaches to science, medicine, and technology. Who knew putting live pigeons inside missiles to guide the flight path might win the ‘Nobel’ Peace Prize in 2024? Or that using chromatography to separate drunk and sober worms could win the award in chemistry? Unfortunately, the Ig Nobel Prize winners don’t get million-dollar grants for their contributions to the world, but they get recognized for their achievements that ‘first make people LAUGH, then make them THINK.’ Thank the Improbable Research group for collecting the many outrageous ideas from researchers around the world, and for honoring the creativity of the human mind with the Ig Nobels, encouraging other minds to imagine the most unlikely possibilities.
Abrahams, Marc. “Improbable Research.” Improbable Research, September 23, 2025. https://improbable.com/.
BOOK 4, PROLOGUE
Factoid: The oceans of our planet are enormous, but there’s another body in our solar system with even more water. Europa, a moon of Jupiter, appears to be a giant block of ice, but it likely has a liquid ocean underneath with twice the water of all our oceans combined. Since water is essential to all life as we know it, scientists at NASA are trying to determine if Europa could harbor life beyond Earth. With water, essential chemicals, and heat available (caused by the pull of Jupiter), it’s possible, and NASA is keen to find out.
Furfaro, Emily. “Is There Potential for Life on Europa? We Asked a NASA Expert: Episode 52 – NASA.” NASA (blog), February 25, 2025. https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/smd/is-there-potential-for-life-on-europa-we-asked-a-nasa-expert-episode-52/.